Luke Fickell walked into his postgame news conference with a strut in his step, looking every bit like a man on a mission. When he opened with the four “things” that the Ohio State coaches were looking at going into the game against Colorado, it immediately became apparent what that mission was.

The first-year OSU coach said the special units had to make plays. He said the coaches were looking for poise on defense. He said the offense had to show it could run the football. He said the team had to play with emotion.

Uh, let’s see. Did Fickell miss anything there? A freshman named Braxton Miller who was making his first start at quarterback, maybe?

This was a ploy worthy of his predecessor. If there were a Heisman Trophy for question avoidance, Jim Tressel would have been the only 10-time winner. So when Fickell was asked specifically about Miller in the first question after his analysis, it’s not surprising that his answer sounded as if he had learned at the mouth of the master.

“Again, this is a big team thing,” Fickell said. “We know there are a lot of guys ... Jordan Hall gave us some lifts out there, defensively we got some lifts out there. Sometimes, it’s obviously focused on the quarterback. He gave us a lift; he gave us some things we needed offensively as well as keeping plays alive and things. But we’re not going to throw everything at him right off the bat and say anything more than just it’s still about the team.”

It is and it isn’t, though. After the Buckeyes’ abysmal offensive performance in a 24-6 loss to the University of Miami when OSU receivers didn’t catch a pass and 22 yards of the Buckeyes’ 35 yards in the air came on the last two plays, the move from fifth-year senior Joe Bauserman to Miller had brought the team to the crossroads of the season.

Colorado isn’t very good; Ohio State’s 37-17 win left the Buffaloes at 1-3. But if Miller had bombed here, the Ohio State coaches would have come to the meat of the schedule — Michigan State, Nebraska, Illinois and Wisconsin — with the kind of no-quarterback quandary usually found only in college football’s wastelands.

Probably for that reason, the coaches played it safe. They mostly limited Miller to what he does best — make defenders look flat-footed while he is flash-dancing his way to first downs. Because of that, the start of the Braxton Miller era, if that’s what this was, bore a strong resemblance to the start of the Troy Smith era.

At halftime, the freshman from Huber Heights Wayne had thrown only six passes and completed two for 40 yards, including 32 on a touchdown pass to Devin Smith. But he had carried 14 times — three more than featured back Jordan Hall — for 83 yards.

Troy Smith eventually won the Heisman Trophy after starting this way, but it also makes you wonder whether the Miller era might not be over before it really gets started. No freshman quarterback can probably be expected to hold up under that kind of use, particularly one like Miller who was injured every year in high school. But then, both Fickell and Miller admitted that some of his runs were potential pass plays on which the quarterback saw a hole and took off, much like a young Smith.

Miller endured two vicious hits, one in the first half when he was flipped high into the air and came down upside down, and another in the second half when he was leveled on a late hit and came up woozy.